


The Consequences of Knowing

by Kunabee



Series: Fates Undecided [7]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, HorrorSwapfell - Freeform, HorrorTale, Horrorfell, Horrorswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27487276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kunabee/pseuds/Kunabee
Summary: If the monsters don't leave the Underground by the end of June, Aliza always falls on October 20th, 21XX. She doesn't remember the timelines, but she knows some things as fact.
Series: Fates Undecided [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516946
Kudos: 5





	The Consequences of Knowing

**Author's Note:**

> While Aliza is the invention of sourapplestudios and Horrortale the AU concept belongs to them, this is very much my own take on it.

If the monsters don't leave the Underground by the end of June, Aliza always falls on October 20th, 21XX.

The first couple of times, she had run away to Mount Ebott and sought shelter. The first time as a place to stay; the other time to escape a storm. Despite going to two different places, she fell. Then she decided to not run away to Mount Ebott when she escaped her foster family, only to end up kidnapped and dropped there anyway. Not running away resulted in field trips.

October 20th, 21XX. Every time.

Aliza couldn't remember the timelines like she knew that the Child could. Or Children? There were two different children involved, depending on how the timeline played out. Usually, they freed the monsters, either one of them. But whenever they didn't, that became Aliza's job.

In the original world, she was the seventh SOUL they needed. She willingly gave up her SOUL but somehow survived. She knew she would live through it. Even the first time: she knew that they could use her SOUL without killing her. When it became harsher, darker, crueler - she was the eighth, falling just short of freedom. And when everything was flipped, she was either the first or the second. Someone left, those times, to gather the rest of the SOULs they needed. Aliza left with them when it was a kinder world; she hid away in the skeletons' house when it was a crueler one until the barrier broke.

Nobody really knew how Aliza knew sign language, particularly since she would go back and forth between one they could understand and one they could not recognize. She knew she remembered it from the times she fell, but she had remembered it the very first time too. Or maybe her memories blurred together.

She couldn't really remember the timelines. She just remembered being afraid. She remembered a date. She remembered that her SOUL could be removed and she would survive it, as long as one was careful.

By now, Aliza was resigned to her fate. She would fall, and fall, and fall, and fall. October 20th, 21XX would come around and she would be forced or compelled to the mountain and she would fall.

Her favorite timelines were the ones where the monsters escaped before she fell. Sometimes it was a year or two before 21XX; other times it was the end of June, cutting it down to the wire before Aliza knew she'd have to be the one to fall, to trigger the escape and the ending. When they escaped before her, they were healthier. They were happier. They adapted to human civilization without struggles.

When she had to fall, they were hungry. There was nothing Aliza could do.

An empty, dust-covered house. Freezing cold snow with a couple of bunnies and a couple of skeletons, hungry. So hungry. She was hungry, too.

(One time, the house wasn't empty. The woman there was half-crazed and tried to keep Aliza trapped. But everyone would be trapped if Aliza didn't go. She hated those times the most, because she almost always died repeatedly before she could finally escape.)

When the Children unified the timelines, Aliza discovered something else strange. Nobody else's SOUL changed from timeline to timeline.

Sometimes, hers was purple; or green; or blue. It was never red or orange, but it varied. When it was light blue, she found herself being more patient; when it was yellow, she felt more anger at the injustice of the monsters' circumstances. Most people, Aliza began to realize, had their SOULs based on their personality traits, not the other way around.

If Aliza went to Alphys or Undine, it had to be from one of the original worlds. The scientist was always dead by the time she fell, and the Children could only do so much to 'repair the timelines'. Aliza didn't quite understand that. They were more broken than ever, with each other filling in the cracks. It was unstable. It would fall. She didn't say anything, though. Who would believe her?

So Aliza was left alone in her conclusions, her realizations. She was just the strange, quiet girl who spent far too much time with what other humans referred to as the 'scariest' monsters. The Children didn't. Perhaps the Children would understand. They had so much knowledge, so many abilities...

But Sans didn't trust them. Papyrus didn't trust them. Some Sanses and some Papyri forgave them, but the quieter one - the quieter one simmered in a little bit of hate for the Children leaving them. Not the ones who didn't _suffer_ , not the ones that Aliza didn't fall with, but they still didn't trust the Children. Aliza decided that she wouldn't either, if that was the case.

But she also loved them. She loved them, and she loved the monsters. But trust... Trust was dangerous. She trusted two monsters, only in the 'horror' timelines (as it was decided they would be called), but in all of the 'horror' timelines. Out of everyone in the whole world, Aliza reserved her trust for the skeletons who had been broken, battered, bruised. ~~The Butchers~~. Her heroes. Her friends. So she bit her tongue about all the things she knew and found strange and lived quietly with the Children and the other fallen kids and Miss Toriel (Misses Toriel, Miss Toriels? There were many).

Aliza knew, though. She knew many things. She knew that for all the Children preached compassion and mercy, they were capable of having neither. They always saw the monsters at their best. They never lost a limb, or died over and over and over again. They smiled, they cared, they loved. But they had also left. Aliza was the one who stayed.

Aliza was the one who kept secrets.

**Author's Note:**

> blame popatochisp for why i have added 2 more horror-verses to the lineup


End file.
